Lots of third party apps rely upon Google APIs which are not a part of ASOP

There are over a half billion Android users in China who are prevented from using any of Google Play Services, and they're still fine.

AOSP may not be as fully featured as it could be, but it's clearly quite possible to use Android without Google.

They mostly have their own version of it, just developed by Chinese companies and controlled by the government. From what I have seen, it's quite on par with Google Play Services.

Google Play Services are pretty much replaced by Baidus package there which pretty much does a lot of things the same way.

And those APIs actually rely on things hosted on Google servers (Push notification system, fused location system, Google login and other come to mind) which can't exist without Googles involvement.

Making people implement their own services proved to be problematic, because most developers didn't care enough to optimize their services for low memory and battery usage, resulting in terrible battery life on Android devices. Since Android must compete against iOS, a central system had to be established to reach similar battery life.

>fused location system ... which can't exist without Googles involvement

That's kind of a cop-out though. It certainly could exist without Google's involvement if the location provider were a pluggable module within AOSP. microG does this - my phone supports the fused location API using Mozilla's location database instead of Google's. (There are other modules too, like a local database of cell towers if you're willing to dedicate some storage to it.)

Push notifications and Google login sure, but some of what's in the Play Services APIs should really be in AOSP, IMO.

EDIT: For that matter, you could even have the push provider available as a module too, even though Google's push service is the only one currently available.

How would you have push provider available as a module? The sender is communicating with a particular push provider.

The client could provide the push service to use when initially setting up push notifications for that app. I believe that's how Web Push works.

Sure and you can use microG and other services on your Google free phone. I do agree that flashing firmware without Google services should be easier on devices, but the actors preventing that aren't Google (locked bootloaders are demanded by your American telcos like Verizon, DRM lockdown is demanded by the copyright lobby and SoC vendors refuse to release the kernel sources).

But in general, I don't get what your expectation is, that Google will spend millions developing an OS and then give it to competition or deliberately provide worse user experience than their main competitor?

Yeah and most of them wouldn't exist without those APIs. These complaints often feel like they're trying to square a circle.

In what way does that mean that Google services are required for Android? Lots of Linux games rely on Steam being present.

If you don't want Steam, don't use games that require it. If you don't want Google services like Google's Maps widget or its push messaging service or its game leaderboard, use apps that use another data source for maps and another persistent connection for push messages and another leaderboard service.

F-Droid and Amazon's App Store are filled entirely with apps that don't (can't) use Google's services, yet many on HN blindly continue to claim that this is not possible.

Except AOSP doesn't even pass the Android certification [edit: should be compatibility, not certification] test suite, so stage one of building non-Google Android is making AOSP actually work as it should. :(

What functionality is AOSP missing that is necessary to pass Android certification?

See, e.g., https://twitter.com/CopperheadOS/status/907720250501844994

It's mostly not functionality missing to pass the CTS, but just broken untested AOSP-only code (that is replaced by Google closed source code in Google builds).

These only fail because there is extra unused noop functionality in AOSP that CTS complains about (a bug in AOSP), not because Google services are required to pass CTS.

The point was that AOSP isn't a perfect base, because the Android team obviously don't care enough to actually test it, not that Google services are required.

That makes your first comment completely irrelevant with respect to its parent. It's also a stretch to say that you need to do anything to make AOSP work as it should simply because it contains extra noop APIs.

I've done this with all Google apps minus maps. Haven't found anything close to Google maps.

Also how do I turn off location tracking by Google, constantly asking me to upload pictures, write a review, answer questions ect

In Google Maps for Android, press the menu icon. Settings. Notifications. Your Contributions.

You can switch off all the nags in there.

You might want to check out Eraser, made by Mapzen. Eraser is a Google Maps like app that uses OpenStreetMap data and is backed solely open source software and open data. It's a little rough around the edges (especially when it comes to transit routing).

https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map

https://mapzen.com/blog/erasermap-beta/

Yes please! I understand you can disable the notifications in Maps settings, but that likely doesn't disable the constant location tracking.

Does anyone know how to disable this?

Created an account to share this, as it seems not many people know... You can use an AOSP such as lineage, or carbon. There are quite a few options. Then, use fdroid and a play store alternative. You DO NOT need the google play services, such as microgapps, or opengapps. Even to use Google Maps! I use google maps by downloading maps anonymously with the Yalp store, and then I don't sign in. I don't have the so called high accuracy location, but I still have GPS, which, obviously, is sufficient. I can navigate easily in a large city, for example.

As far as I know google can't link me to any data that maps sends.

Spotify works fine, along with a half dozen other apps.

Signal can a bit of a pain, as it complains about not having a google api backend, which I think is for contacts. Again, the pain is worth it. And there are open source contact alternatives.

I can't get apps that I paid for, for that I would have to sign in with Yalp, which I haven't bothered with. The freedom is so much better.

Everything else works, banking apps, Firefox, Dropbox, etc.

I'm using a Sony Xperia Z2. The battery is AMAZING! I really wish a largish company would pick this idea up, and start selling phones without google. Sony? The freedom and privacy is worth a lot in my opinion.

Well, Fdroid is great and with the automatic upgrade extension (totally optional) really easy to use. But using an Android without access to the Play Store is just kinda weird.

So yes, you can remove Google completely from your smartphone, but then many things are getting much more complicated. So I don't want to remove Google completely from my phone. I just want to have easy options to turn things off I do not like.

I just wish Google would respect their users wishes a little more and would keep developing their services in a direction which would embrace community contributions to the eco system.

> So yes, you can remove Google completely from your smartphone, but then many things are getting much more complicated. > I just wish Google would respect their users wishes a little more [...] I just want to have easy options to turn things off I do not like.

This is not how things work in reality. People/corporations don't do what you want just because you're wishing it. If you are unwilling to tolerate a little bit of discomfort why should they tolerate the risk of changing their practices which have been proven to work? By continuing to buy Android devices, despite your complaints, you are, in fact, providing them with the opposite incentive.

It's called "Location history" and you can manage it in Settings -> Google on most decently modern Android devices.

Disable GPS, bluetooth and wifi scanning. Guaranteed to work.